How to Start a Construction Website with BestBuild

BestBuild is a premium WordPress theme for creating construction and building websites. The professional design of the theme is complemented by its excellent features. Powered by multiple premium plugins, BestBuild makes it very easy to create attractive architecture websites within a short period of time.

Installing BestBuild

After downloading the theme, once you install and activate it, you will be notified that you need to install some WordPress plugins. Luckily, all of the required plugins are included in the theme package. Therefore, you only have to install and activate them.

After activating all the plugins, you can import the demo content by going to the Appearance -> Demo Import page. Clicking the ‘Import’ button will start the process. It may take some time depending on your server speed.

Customization Options

You will find all the customization options in the Appearance -> Customize page. The simple but powerful options of this page will let you control every detail of your website from one convenient location.

The first section, ‘Site Title & Tagline’ lets you update the title and tagline you provided during WordPress installation. ‘Navigation’ lets you choose the top menu for your website. ‘Widgets’ allows you to add widgets in the footer.

From the ‘Static Front Page’ section, you can choose different pages for the blog and the home page of your site. In the ‘Blog’ section, you will find options to choose the blog layout, display or hide the sidebar and sidebar location.

All the font related options are located in the ‘Typography’ section. From this section, you can choose fonts for the body and the heading texts. You will also find options to choose the font sizes for the body and the H1 – H6 heading tags.

You can upload your custom logo from the ‘Header’ section. Below, you will find options to set the logo width and to make the header sticky. In the ‘Social Buttons’ area, you can provide links to your social media profiles including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Flickr Instagram, Dribble, YouTube etc.The ‘Contacts’ area lets you provide the address, working hours and phone number of your business.

In the ‘Footer’ section, you can provide a custom copyright text. And then, you can choose the number of widgets for the footer, or completely disable footer widgets.

‘Colors’ section lets you choose the color skin for the website. The available options include Red, Yellow, Orange and Green. The ‘Shop’ section could be used to decide whether to display the sidebar in the shop page and its location.

Lastly, the ‘Other’ section features the option to upload a custom favicon. You can also enable the front-end customizer from this section. Enabling the front-end customizer will allow the visitors to make the top menu sticky and to apply the color skin they prefer.

As you make the changes, you will also view the site preview instantly. That means you don’t have to save and refresh after making each change, which is pretty cool. After making all the changes, click ‘Save & Publish’ from the top-left area.

Using the Sidebars

BestBuild enables you to add sidebars which could be displayed in the home page. To add a new sidebar, go to Sidebars -> Add New from your website dashboard. The sidebar could contain regular text or Visual Composer elements.

After publishing a sidebar, go to Appearance -> Customize, find out the ‘Blog’ section. You will find the newly created sidebar listed in the ‘Sidebar’ drop-down list. A complete list of all the sidebars is available in Sidebars -> All Sidebars.

Normal posts will have a regular sidebar in them. In order to customize that sidebar, go to Appearance -> Widgets. In the ‘Default Sidebar’ section, you will find the currently active widgets for regular posts. You can add, remove or edit any of these widgets.

Adding a New Post

While the screen for adding a new post looks exactly the same as a regular post editor, you will find lots of customization options below in the ‘Page Options’ section. For example, you can set up a background image for that post and set the background-position and background-repeat in the ‘Page Background’ section.

Then, the ‘Title Box’ allows you to choose whether to display a rectangle box for the title, define the sub-title, choose colors for the box, define a custom background image, configure the background image etc.

The ‘Breadcrumbs’ section lets you choose whether you want to display the breadcrumb and choose the breadcrumby color. The ‘Title Box Button’ allows you to add a custom button in the title box. It is possible to customize the button text, URL, button color, border color, font and arrow colors. Lastly, you can enable the prev/next buttons by checking the appropriate box in ‘Prev/Next Buttons’ section. You can choose the border and arrow color for this section too.

Using Visual Composer

As BestBuild comes with the premium version of Visual Composer (VC), you can easily create professional templates within a few minutes. Go to Visual Composer -> General Settings from your website dashboard to set up the basic options for the plugin.

On that page, you will find options to select which content type(s) can use VC, which user groups can create VC templates, disable responsiveness for VC elements etc. After making all the changes, click ‘Save Changes’.
Now, if you go to a content type which has access to VC, you will see two extra buttons like the following –

Clicking the ‘Frontend Editor’ button will open the post preview and lets you customize the content from the front-end. Clicking the ‘Back-end Editor’ will open the VC section in the back-end.

At this point, your post does not have any element in it. In order to publish great looking posts in the quickest possible time, you can use the ready-made templates. To access the available templates, click the ‘Templates’ icon, navigate to the ‘Default Templates’ tab. You can choose any of the 40+ available templates.

On the other hand, if you want to create your own layout, click the ‘+’ icon. This will open the available elements list.

You can filter the elements by using the categories or the search box. Each element also has a short description with it, which gives you a basic idea about the use of the element. Once you have chosen an element, click on the element to add it in the post. A pop-up window will appear which will include customization options according to your chosen element type. After making all the changes, click ‘Save Changes’.

As you add new rows of elements, you can also choose column-based layouts for them. Besides choosing from the readymade layouts like 1/2, 1/3, 2/3, 1/3, 1/4 etc., you can also create your own layouts. There are also dedicated icons for making a duplicate copy, delete or edit the row.

Adding a New LayerSlider Slideshow

In order to add a new LayerSlide slideshow, go toLayerSlider WP -> All Sliders and click the ‘Add New’ button. Provide the name of the slider and hit Enter. At this point, you will be taken to the editing screen for the slideshow.

The ‘Slider Settings’ section is divided into several categories. Each of these categories is provided with numerous customization options. For adding images to the slideshow, click on the ‘Slides’ tab. You will be taken to a page like the following.

Click the ‘Click to Set’ button to add the slide image. After adding the image, you can provide a custom link, select the duration for the image, set transition effect etc. Then, click the ‘+’ button to add the next slide. Repeat the same process and add all the necessary images for your slideshow.

After adding all the images, click ‘Save Changes’.You will find the slideshow shortcode right after the ‘Save Changes’ button. The shortcode could be used to display the slideshow in any place you want. There is also a dedicated icon in the post editor which lets you add LayerSlider slideshows in a really simple way.

Creating a Revolution Slider Slideshow

If you don’t want to use LayerSlider, you can use Revolution Slider to create stunning slideshows for your website. To create a new slideshow, click on the ‘Revolution Slider’ link from your dashboard. Then, click the ‘Create New Slider’ button.

Provide a title and alias for the slideshow. You can customize the display options for the slideshow from the right sidebar. After making the necessary changes, click ‘Create Slider’. This will take you to the slideshow listing page. Click ‘Edit Slides’ to add images to your slideshow.

In the resulting page, click ‘+New Slide’.You can add as many slides (images) as you want. You will find options to delete, duplicate or rearrange the slide position. Once you have added the necessary images, click ‘Close’. Now you can add the slideshow to your posts, pages or other places.

You can use the dedicated drop-down list in the post editor to add Revolution Slider slideshows in your posts or pages.

Other Features

While I have discussed only the most interesting features of BestBuild in this review, there are lots of other useful features too. For examples, you can easily translate the theme into other supported languages. The fully responsive theme looks great in any screen size. The theme comes with full WooCommerce support. Therefore, you can easily include a small online shop in your website. BestBuildalso works perfectly in most modern browsers.

Final Words

Construction and building websites have some special requirements. There are only a few WordPress themes which offer these features, and BestBuild is one of them.

The professional team behind the theme has spent endless hours to make sure that the theme caters to the diverse requirements of its users. I have to say they have done an impressive job. If you are looking for a reliable theme for your next construction and building website project, I definitely recommend BestBuildas a complete solution for you.